Sunday, March 4, 2018

Company Town: "Google has its goggles set on new apartments for employees"

Mr. Cadbury had his Bournville and Lord Leverhulme did Port Sunlight. Hershey Pennsylvania and Pullman, now a neighborhood of Chicago are a couple other examples. Hershey no longer smells of chocolate although there are rumors the theme park still squirts the aroma into the air.
Less bucolically the Pullman Strike and boycott led to at least 30 deaths.

Anyway, what will Googleville smell of?

From the property mavens at The Real Deal:

Google is beginning to get serious about the construction businessThe tech giant is soliciting proposals for prefab units for its employees

UPDATED, Wednesday, February 28, 2018, 9:56 p.m.: The search engine king is searching for housing.

Google is asking several prefab housing startups for proposals for housing it is considering building for its employees.

In late December, the city of Mountain View — where Google is
headquartered — approved a long-range development plan that included a
provision for the potential construction of 10,000 new units of housing.
Google was among several companies that supported the plan.

Recently, the tech giant solicited at least eight firms for modular
or prefab housing possibilities, and has met with representatives from
Katerra, a Menlo Park-based technology company that handles various
aspects of the building process, according to the Information news
site. In January, Katerra raised $865 million from Japan’s SoftBank, which it will use to add factories and fund research and development.

The Information reported earlier Wednesday that Google had sent the
requests as part of its plan to build 10,000 units of housing for
employees at its sprawling Mountain View location.

But a Google spokesperson said the company had not set a specific
location or number of units. “There are zero plans to add at scale,” the
spokesperson said. Rather, it was searching for ideas, and had selected
a hypothetical location of the San Francisco Bay area.

Mountain View is in Santa Clara County, where fewer than 5,000 units
of housing were built between 2003 and 2014, according to the
Information. Google employs 20,000 people there, mostly at its
750,000-square-foot headquarters....MORE

Here's what $2 million will get you in Sunnyvale, a few miles down the road:

Even the Mercury News, who live and breathe this stuff seem a bit taken aback: